


The Lion-ish Tail and the Fox's Fail

by Satans_Niece



Category: The Cruel Prince, The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Cardan's tail - Freeform, F/M, It deserves to be a character tbh, Locke is such a dick but he's great for plot development, Tail fic, court dinner, shit goes amiss, whoops my hand slipped
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 15:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14718605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satans_Niece/pseuds/Satans_Niece
Summary: basically what the tags sayCardan's tail gets loose during a court dinner.Locke is amused, Jude very much isn'tReposted from Tumblr





	1. Chapter 1

During an exceptionally long night of negotiations with the Seelie and Unseelie courts, Jude was about ready to help Ghost assassinate both leaders and their respective dignitaries and be done with it, consequences be damned.  Keeping the balance between the armies of Chaos and Order was proing more difficult than she’d expected, and it was beginning to show in the bags under her eyes and Carden’s increased liquor consumption.

She looks up absently as the doors to the High Court’s Great Hall swing open with the snarl of steel-on-latch and watches Locke enter. Jude tries to track his movements, eyes narrowed at the familiarly disgusting fox, but he’s quickly removed from her view when a Seelie lord moves his elbow and blocks her view.  She listens to an Unseelie Lady titter on about the day-to-day annoyances of her clashes with and lack of freedom in dealing with the humans; fingers the knife hidden in the folds of her dress; and waits for Locke to make another appearance.

After he ran off with Taryn and officially made her his wife, Jude had wondered when the meddling vulpine would show up to destroy another aspect of her life.  Whereas Valerian had coveted violence and Nicasia was prone to involving herself with the currency of humiliation, Locke was drawn to things and people he found entertaining like a moth to a flame.  Unfortunately for most of his unfortunate subjects, his idea of entertainment more often involved emotional torture and faux love than it did human fun.

Glancing to her left, she found Cardan already looking her way, offering a lazy smirk as he effortlessly makes small talk with a Seelie noble with green wings and wobbling chins.  Jude glares back and his smirk only widens, drinking in her apparent fury as if it were as tangible as the wine in his cup.  The lacy sneer shows off finely pointed canines and the barest hint of gums wet with the dark-red elderberry wine that the leader of the Unseelie court had bestowed upon him as tribute to his “generosity” in allowing her increased freedom to meddle in human affairs inside her domain.

She considers kicking him under the table to demonstrate how tangibly _painful_  her fury can be when he abruptly straightens in his chair, smirk falling off as though someone had just stuck both of his feet in ice water or showed him a horrible premonition of lurking threat.  Jude raises an eyebrow, trying to appear unconcerned and desperately hoping that it was the former and not the later that caused the shadow of panic to cross the king’s face.  In any case, the look is gone now, Cardan having schooled himself back into cool amusement.

Then Locke appears around the corner of the Kingling’s high-backed chair, leaning down to whisper in her ear a hasty “good luck” before, with a smirk rivaling Cardan’s vanishing into the depths of the pillars in the back of the Great Hall, the back of Jude’s chair preventing her from seeing precisely where he went.  She turns the knife in her pocket over and over in her hand and grits her teeth. Whatever Locke just did to Cardan, (because there’s really no reason to believe that the timing of these events is coincidence) he did it knowing that His Majesty and I would be trapped in this hall with the Courts of Vinegar and Swine and forced to endure whatever trap he had set out for Cardan and her.

Mulling this over and very much liking to not end up on the receiving end of another one of Locke’s little “games”, Jude surveys the table quickly for signs of Locke’s meddling before scrutinizing the amount of empty glasses that have accumulated around Cardan’s plate like a flock of flightless birds.  

She’s not expected to do much at this gathering, as the human advisor of the High King, she’s here out of decorum in the eyes of the visiting courts and as a sort of glorified babysiter in her own.  She’s here more out of obligation to make sure that Cardan doesn’t drink too much than to engage in court affairs, which makes for an extremely dull evening.  Tonight however, Jude begrudgingly accepts that while it may be boring most nights, at least now she has some freedom to observe and attempt to figure out what Locke was after and what he meant by “good luck” after doing something that make Cardan nearly fall out of his chair.  Was Cardan keeping something from her that Locke reminded him of? Was something going to go down at the dinner that would give her need of luck?

Lost in thought, Jude didn’t realize the curious looks that the Seelie court was giving her or the food ones from Cardan that did not go unnoticed by the rest of the table.  Unfortunately, Cardan is as unaware of the latter as Jude is, at least until an elderly member of the Seelie Court broaches the subject directly.

“Have you two made marriage arrangements yet?” He asks, reading Cardon’s subconscious actions and making assumptions, “You’re both a bit young, but I suppose having a royal heir could be very useful for stability in these curious times”.  He chuckles, much to the consensus of the rest of his Court, and the internal horror of Cardan, who is still under the impression that he is doing everything in his power to hate Jude and believes that he is doing a remarkable job of parrying the question, though he does stutter somewhat in the rebuttal.  Shifting nervously in his seat, he thanks whatever gods rule over this accursed land that Jude is still safely zoned out and seemingly unaware of of the turn the conversation has taken.

Jude, however unaware of the thing that has made the High King so uncomfortable, is unknowingly suffering the effects first hand, and has discovered what Locke meant by the cryptic warning “good luck”.  When Locke slipped behind Cardan right before he slipped behind her, he must have pulled cardan’s tail out of his pants.  While Cardan has been entertaining the Courts, Jude had become preoccupied with the strange “breeze” that had been ruffling around her skirts ever since Locke had showed up.  Being unable to see past the billowing, iridescent petticoat of her dress, Jude had been trying to unsuccessfully root out what was under the table without displaying any outward signs of what was going on to their guests or Cardan.  She’d found out soon enough what had been the “breeze” when the tail had found its way around her skirts and wound its way around her left arm like a mammalian snake, forcing her to keep that hand curled in her lap as she attempted to awkwardly eat with just her right and keep an eye on the bothersome tail.

Currently, the furred tip was itching around her elbow, and Jude knew that if she shoved it off it would be enough to alert its owner of its misadventure and could interfere with negotiations.  Knowing Cardan, he’d have to pause to shove the tail back down his trousers before continuing, which would seem rude and impolite to their guests as well as sloppy.  It would not be a good impression to make, not with a truce so close to being found.  She was also aware that if it made a move that could make it visible over the table top, she would also have no choice.

As she sat watching it, she unwittingly noticed that while only the tip was crowned with crow-black hair, the rest of the thin, lion-esque tail was covered in a fine, downy fur that looked velvet soft.  A part of it wanted to stroke the tail where it wound around her elbow, but the rest of her suppressed it with the sick determination that she carried with her like a shield, the firm belief that she hated Cardan and everything about him.  Even his full lips and velvet tail, if she must.  

A few minutes later though, Jude began to worry that the tip was becoming visible above the table, both because of the knowing smile that she was getting from an aged imp across the table and because of how high the tail’s tuft wound around her bicep.  As gently as she could, she attempted to slide the coils of the tail lower on her arm, hooking her left hand around the section that wound around her wrist so it couldn’t slide any higher in retaliation.  Not enough to remove it, just enough to prevent it from being seen.  

She was careful not to look at cardan while doing this, though she heard his breath hitch as he abruptly cut off in the middle of the flattery he was giving to a lady of the Unseelie court on her wings.  His silver tongue was failing for once.  Jude rolled her eyes, but part of her took great pride in the fact that his tail was so sensitive, though he had little to no control over it.  The tail, of course, was having none of being moved.  It squeezed Jude’s arm tightly and almost playfully, the tip uncurling from her bicep to try and curl around her right hand as she now attempted to remove the thing entirely.  Subtlety be damned.  She was sure that cardan knew exactly what she was doing, a suspicion that was confirmed when she looked over and saw him gripping his wineglass as if it might run off, his usually default smirk halfway to the pained smile that had surfaced the night she’d kidnapped him.  It was a subtle difference, but she had practice.  There was something different about this one though, but she couldn’t quite place it. Not while she was in the middle of trying to wrestle with his tail, which was being extremely uncooperative, thank you very much.  

 _Serves him right for not controlling the damn thing_ , Jude thinks as the tail, having discovered Jude’s other hand, makes a dart to burry and wind itself in both and Cardan makes a barely audible groan as it succeeds.  Choosing to ignore the blush creeping up the pale skin of the princeling’s neck, Jude decides on a course of action.

In a final act of desperation and not about to be bested in a wrestling match with Cardan’s tail, Jude grabs both sections of tail at the same time and squeezes it, not enough to hurt Cardan, but hopefully enough that the tail will decide to leave her alone for the rest of this trainwreck of a court dinner.

To her utter and awestruck embarrassment, the tail does not slink quietly back to its owner but rather winds tighter around both of her hands as Cardan’s eyes go wide and he makes a sort of involuntary keening sound in the back of his throat.  Pupils blown as wide as he’s seen hers in the dim candlelight, Cardan abruptly stands, grabbing Jude’s arm and pulling her out of her seat, his tail still wrapped around her hands and arms.  He ungracefully drags her out of the great hall, giving neither her nor their guests any chance to protest, and glowering at the gaping servants that ogle them both on the way past.

High in the balconies, a fox-haired boy sits giggling, watching the glowering High King drag Jude out of the banquet hall and waiting for the second half of his plan to kick into action.  The effects of the fairyfruit draught seem to be delayed, but he knows it will kick in soon.  Even with a built up immunity, no mortal can escape its effects for long… 


	2. Chapter 2

Jude had rarely seen Cardan quite as furious as he seemed to be now, her arm clenched in his hand and his tail still wound around her arms.  His face was hard set, usual lazy smirk replaced with a scowl, though his tail and the blush creeping up his neck betrayed him and set Jude’s thoughts wandering along a path that led her to believe that it wasn’t quite embarrassment but something... else that lurked beneath his anger.  She giggled at the thought despite herself, suddenly finding the events of the past few minutes incredibly funny, the part of her that was trying to sound an alarm that something was wrong quickly being drowned by the delightful lightness that she felt and the distraction that was Cardan’s tail.  Preoccupied by the velvety tip that was winding around her bicep, she barely noticed that they had stopped moving, or the confused look of horror that was now gracing the visage of the High King that had been bodily dragging her out of the Great Hall.

Watching from behind a column, invisible to the giggling Jude or the increasingly confused and indignant princeling, Locke snickered to himself.   _ Oh this is going to be fun _ he thought as he peeked out from behind one of the marble plinths that lined the hall. Cardan was looking at Jude as if she’d grown a third head, jaw on the floor, and Jude was rubbing the end of her tail on her cheek like a cat.  If he was being honest, Locke had wanted to try out this specific scenario more than most of the other  _ entertainments  _ that he usually prepared for himself, partially because anything involving Jude instantly became more interesting and also because he too had found Cardan’s papers with “Jude” scratched across them, as well as  _ other, more interesting ones _ , and unlike Jude, he knew  _ exactly _ what the prince had meant by them.  Cardan wasn’t like Valerian, who coveted violence, or Nicasia, who relished in her own ego.  No, the youngest prince was unlike even Locke, who loved the drama that people created and watching how it played out.  Cardan loved Jude, and in doing so he enabled the other three to indulge in their own pleasures with dual success: The pain and fear and profound  _ humiliation  _ of Jude, and secondly, and perhaps more interestingly,  _ the effects it had on the Prince.  _ _ Yes,  _ Locke thought to himself,  _ This will be very entertaining indeed. _

Meanwhile, Cardan was considering amputation.  No matter how hard he tried to contain it, his tail always tried to escape, and  _ always, always  _ attempted to find its way to Jude.  He’d tried learning to control it (a particularly fruitless venture), he’d tried keeping it in his pants through various methods, and he’d even tried to stuff it up his shirt once or twice.  He really should have known that it was only a matter of time before she’d noticed, though he was absolutely going to use his Kingly Powers of Vengeance to banish Like to some Unseelie court far, far, away from the High Court for accelerating the process.  Now he’d just have to get Jude to swear to never speak of what happened again, and possible wipe her memories of the event. She’d hate him for it, although probably not more than she already did, and there’s definitely be a price for him. She might even force him to undo it and restore her memory.  But it was something he had to--

Cardan stopped dead in his tracks and looked incredulously back at the girl he was dragging behind him.  She’d been strangely cooperative with his forceful removal from the court dinner, but he’d chalked that up to the shock and outrage of being dragged out of a court dinner.  Now he realized that he’d been horribly mistaken. Looking over Jude, he realized that Locke hadn’t just pulled his tail out, knowing that it would go straight to Jude, he’d also laced something Jude had been eating or drinking with Fairy Fruit.

Jude didn’t giggle.  She was the power behind the High Throne of the Faerie Kingdoms and the undisputed Queen of the Court of Shadows that ensured his reign from the very shadows from which they got their name.  She scowled, occasionally mocked him with her human  _ “sarcasm” _ or snickered when the Bomb made a particularly rude comment concerning their enemies, but she did not  _ giggle. _ Well, she had, once.  Under the influence of fairy fruit, that night that she’d been bid by Nicasia to undress and had almost kissed his feet, her eyes looking up at him, wide and doe-brown as she… No.  He hadn’t allowed that last part to happen, as much as he’d imagined it later. He’d freed her from the drug with her own blood and allowed Locke to walk her home.

_ That _ Jude had giggled childishly and asked Nicasia if she was beautiful, and it was  _ that  _ Jude that was looking up at him now, her brown eyes as wide and innocent as they’d been that night, the hard edge that usually shaped her expressions gone and replaced with parted lips and pupils blown wide despite the bright witchlight that flooded the hall.  

Slowly, his smirk returned as Jude continued to stare up at him, expression devoid of anger as she absentmindedly stroked his tail.  He’d been preparing himself to deal with the angry hailstorm that was Jude’s wrath for his loss of control over his tail, but in her current state, it appeared that she didn’t mind in the slightest.  He watched curiously as she ran her fingers along the length of it, sending involuntary shivers up Cardan’s spine. He tried not to dwell on how good it felt as he felt his face grow warm. In any case, with her in this condition, he could probably make her think this whole thing had been a weird dream if he got her to her chambers and in bed before the drug wore off, which would save them both a lot of unanswerable questions and awkward explanations.  All he had to do was get her in bed before Locke tried anything else and station a guard at her door so that she wouldn’t be disturbed until she sleeps off the effects of the drug. With luck, she’d wake up the next morning and scowl at the strange dream she had, and not give it a second thought.

So he started walking again, allowing her to keep his tail wound around her arms because she probably wouldn’t remember it anyways.  If he was being completely honest, her hands on his tail weren’t  _ completely _ unwelcome, but luckily  for his peace of mind, that self-honesty was mostly subconscious.  

He steered the rather loopy girl behind him toward her rooms and having arrived at the door to her chambers, he grabbed his tail and with some difficulty unraveled it from her arms.  This effort was fought half-heartedly by Jude, who seemed to quite enjoy having the soft, warm, tail to pet. She looked up at him when he was done, looking almost pleading (and strangely silent for Jude), as he silently shoved the offending tail back down his trousers and pushed her through the doorway to her room.  

“Stay here.  I’ll deal with the Courts, just go to bed before you do something exceedingly stupid.”  He advised her with as much conviction as he could muster, hoping it would be enough to persuade her in her drugged state.  She nodded dazedly, but didn’t move from where she was standing in the doorway, facing him and not making any move to call a servant to help her ready for bed.  Sighing loudly, he pushes past her into her chambers, grumbling loudly about the uselessness of mortals. Jude follows him, her mouth drawn down in a childish pout so far from her usual look of loathing that he almost laughs as she proclaims loudly:

“Mortals aren’t usless, just stupidly gorgeous princelings!” and pointing at him with an accusatory index finger.  His eyebrows in his hairline, Cardan assures himself that Jude must be employing the human skill of sarcasm, as there is no way that she, the girl that so detests him that she won’t even allow him to help her off of a horse could  _ ever  _ find him attractive.

“Jude, you’re delusional and clearly very tired” he tries reasoning, “Locke drugged you and you need to go to sleep so you can sleep it off”.  

He contemplates salt, but to wake her from the drug now would likely result in his maiming and Locke losing his head.  While the later is quite welcome, he’d like to avoid the former if at all possible. His plan to get her to pass the whole thing off as a dream was at this point, probably his safest bet to get out of the whole situation with both his pride and his head.

She taps her chin, contemplative.

“Is that why everything is so pretty?” she asks, referencing Locke and the drug.

Cardan stifles the impulse to simply lock the door and walk out of the room to avoid falling prey to the growing urge inside of him to take advantage of her lack of hate to touch her hands, her face, her lips, to kiss her again like that time in the Court of Shadows, but longer, and without the malice that their first kiss had.  But he knows that he can do neither, as the first would leave her vulnerable to Locke’s further meddling, and the latter would ensure the loss of both his pride and his crown whenever the fairy fruit wears off, which is bound to happen sooner or later. 

So he goes back to attempting to get her to go to bed so he can post a palace guard, or possibly the Ghost or the Roach outside her door and be done with the whole mess.

Unbidden, his thoughts wander back to the only other time he’d seen her under the influence of fairy fruit as he sits her lightly on her bed and turns around to look for a bell pull to call and attendant or a nightdress for her to change into after he leaves.  She’s captivating when she’s not trying to kill him, and though a large part of him tells him that his obsession is  _ wrong,  _ that he can’t  _ possibly  _ fall in love with a human girl, he knows that that part of him is Dain’s bigotry talking, or worse, Balekin’s.  The rest of him wonders why they all despise her so much, and settles on the fact that it is probably the same reason that she scares him sometimes. 

Though she’s mortal, she bears herself as someone unafraid of death, someone who  _ should  _ live forever, an unending testament of strength and vitality potent enough to shake the arrogance of even the most narcissistic faerie.  Lost in his thoughts of her and his quest for a dressing gown, he misses the shift of the bed behind him and stills as warm arms wrap around his waist.  

Frozen, Cardan feels her press up against his back, her arms around him, her face pressed into the space between his shoulder blades.  Unsure how to respond without angering her, because drugged or not, an angry Jude was a dangerous Jude, Cardan stays stock still. His eyebrows furrow as he wonders what she is doing, before he hears a small sob, and then another.  He’s suddenly in way beyond his depth. He’s seen Jude angry, scared, and embarrassed, has been the cause of all three of these brands of upset, but he is still completely unprepared to deal with Jude crying. 

Almost afraid to try and move, Cardan just stands there as Jude’s arms tighten around his waist and she sniffs softly “Don’t leave me”.  

Not for the first time in the pat hour, Cardan finds himself utterly at a loss for words.  Jude isn’t supposed to need him, she’s supposed to loathe him fro making her life miserable and use him as a pawn until Oak comes of age to run the kingdom.  He searches for a snarky respones to get her off his back, quite literally in this case, but comes up empty. Instead, the part of him that scribbled down her name on countless sheets of paper and pushed the pin into her finger that night that they drugged her surfaces.  Acting on instinct more than anything else, he whispers back, for once no trace of mockery tracing his words.

“I’m right here”

Jude stays silent and shifts behind him and reaches down his pants.  He begins to wonder if  _ he’s  _ the one dreaming for a moment before he feels her fingers curl around the base of his tail and realizes that it’s probablly been pressed uncomfortably against her stomach.  She carefully tugs it out of his trousers, careful to not untuck his shirt, and it immediately winds itself around her, pressing her even closer to cardan’s back, causing her breath to hitch against his spine and the blush to creep even farther up his neck.  As with with the night she kissed im, Cardan feels the last of his will to oppsose her give out. His shoulders soften and he slowly uses his tail (which suprisingly obeys him for once) to shift Jude so that she is in front of and not behind him. Hesitantly, he puts his arms around her, trying to soothe the stifled sobs that are shuddering through her.  

He wonders how long she’s been holding them in, because she just clutches him even harder, crushing her face against the front of his shirt as she cries and he gently rubs circles into the space between her shoulder blades, unsure of what he is supposed to do, much less what to say.  Finally, her shoulders stop shaking and she looks up at him, tears still shining in her eyes.

“I know that this isn’t real, because the real Cardan hates me.  He would have shoved me in the door or sneered and left me to Locke’s whims.” She shakes her head and smiles weakly. “I know this is a dream, but I really don’t want to wake up.” 

For once, Cardan doesn’t think twice about the truth of her words.  Jude reads the acceptance on his face and mistakes it for agreement. 

“I know I’ll have to wake up” she starts again, before a fraction of her sober self’s steel creeps into her voice, “I command you not to leave me until i wake up.” she finishes, and bows her head. “I don’t know if commands work in dreams, but even if they don’t, I don’t want you to leave.  I don’t want to keep being alone.”

Cardan has no words for this. Sighing, he gives up on his plan to make her believe it was all a dream and resigns himself to facing her wrath tomorrow morning.  But she can’t punish him for a command  _ she  _ gave him, no matter how drugged she was when she uttered it.

\------

Just as the sun rose above the horizon of Jude’s window, she woke up to the glare in her eyes, sore and confused.  She tried to sit up, but something heavy was around her shoulders, preventing her. Not fully awake, she tried again, figuring it was a twisted blanket. Instead, she felt something shift on the bed beside her and a lazy twitch from a slight weight she hadn’t realized had been on her stomach.  Opening her eyes fully and scowling at the sun, Jude found herself lying sideways on her bed, on top of the covers and still in the dress she’d worn to the dinner last night.  _ That’s strange,  _ she thought. She usually changed before bed.  Then she noticed the black tuft poking out of her closed fist, squinting  to try and determine which of her stuffed animals it belonged to.

She vaugely remembered that she’d had a dream last night, and her stomach twists in nostalgia, though the details remain fuzzy.  She opens her hand and the tuft flicks lazily, as if annoued. Suddenly, she is wide awake. Stuffed animals don’t move. She quickly surveys her surroundings agian trying not to move and notices the pale, long-fingered hand draped over her stomach.  Which means that the tuft does  _ not  _  belong to a stuffed animal-- It belongs to the High King of the Faerie.  The High King of the Faerie that is lightly snoring in her ear, his tail looped loosely around her arm and his arm curled around her stomach.

At once, the details of the “dream” come back to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooooooo~ awkward Cardan is my favorite Cardan  
> Have some soft Jude! she deserves to relax a lil, poor darling, if only she could do it without fairy fruit  
> hmm, that gave me an idea for a Darling in the Franxx AU with 002!Cardan and Hiro!Jude  
> anywho, lmk whatcha think! thank you dearly for reading and i hope you all enjoyed it!   
> e

**Author's Note:**

> Whoah! I had that idea at 23:00 and was like "eh feck it why not" Lmk if I should continue! I'm a tad new to this fandom but it's sooo good. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it  
> toodles,  
> ~Satan's Niece


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